Banksy - Biography of a Graffiti Street Art Legend Other Works The name Banksy ignites controversy, starts conversations and piques curiosity. Banksy is undoubtedly the most controversial street artist to emerge on the global stage. The fact that his identity remains unknown after 20 years on the graffiti scene only adds to the intrigue that surrounds his work. The works of Banksy have appeared in America, Australia, Canada, England, France, Israel, Jamaica and Palestine. Wherever Banksy goes, he makes an impact. His pictorial and satirical messages cross the boundaries between art, philosophy, politics, sociology, humor and narcissism. Banksy is the godfather of a new form of pop art that originated on the street. He used a foundation created by peers to spread powerful messages using accessible street art. Anyone can see Banksy’s stencil art, which enables him to reach a large audience and to make strong statements. City officials have the power to paint over works or allow them to stay. Even when his ephemeral art is destroyed, it draws attention to political issues. Such strong attention, that when most people visit our gallery of Banksy prints , it leads to hours of browsing.

Code Name: Banksy Banksy’s Broom Rat by Infrogmation of New Orleans The works of Banksy are often inspired by other street art luminaries and classical artists. This is another controversial area. Banksy has credited 3D of the British band Massive Attack as a source of inspiration. However, connections to the French graffiti artist Blek le Rat , who is known as the Father of Stencil Graffiti, have caused much more commotion. Although Blek was initially pleased to inspire other artists, he has publicly challenged Banksy’s copycat style. On the other side, Banksy has said that every time he does something, he finds out that Blek Le Rat has done it twenty years earlier. Similarities between the rats pictured in Blek’s work show a distinct overlap. Whoever Banksy is, he has made an unforgettable impact on the world and experienced tremendous commercial success. As an unrivaled phenomenon, Banksy’s irreverent, socio-political style is paving the way for future street artists and perhaps changing the way that graffiti is seen. Banksy may recycle old ideas, but he also inspires new creations from talented and not-so-talented artists.

The recent commercial success of other street artists has been dubbed the “Banksy effect.” Who is Banksy? This is an inevitable question whenever Banksy is discussed. Although the street artist’s identity is technically unknown, there have been several theories as to who the mystery artist is. The most popular of these theories is that Banksy is a Bristol native named Robin Gunningham . The UK’s Daily Mail published an extensive piece on Gunningham where they interviewed schoolmates. A photograph showing a man believed to be Gunningham working on stencils in Jamaica is the lynchpin in this theory. The man that the Daily Mail spoke to said that Gunningham was one of three artistically inclined students in his class. According to this report, Gunningham attended the prestigious Bristol Cathedral Choir School, which has an annual tuition of £9,240. A neighbor told the Daily Mail that Banksy left school at 16 and began working in graffiti often traveling for months at a time and eventually leaving home altogether. Journalist Simon Hattenstone of The Guardian newspaper is one of the only people who interviewed Banksy in person. He said that Banksy wore jeans and a T-shirt to the interview.

Bansky was also sporting a silver tooth, a silver chain and one silver earring. If Banksy is Gunningham, which he has denied, he was born in 1973 and had surgery early in life to repair a cleft palate. Banksy also created a pseudo self-portrait that features a picture of Gunningham. Recent news reports have followed Mrs. Banksy, a political activist known as Joy Millward. According to anecdotal reports, the artist has successfully concealed his identity from his family and in-laws. The Early Years Banksy has been active on the graffiti scene since the early 1990s. He was first associated with a gang of underground street artists in Bristol who were known as the DryBreadZ Crew (DBZ). In Bristol, he partnered with Inkie and other notable artists who still work with Banksy. Based on personal comments, Banksy developed his stenciling technique after a brush with the law. Banksy said he was 18 when he attempted to paint bubble letters on a public train. The police came, and everyone in his gang fled. Banksy ended up hiding under a garbage truck.

While lying on the ground in a puddle of oil, Banksy contemplated ways to make the graffiti process faster. At that moment, he saw stenciled letters sprayed on the bottom of the truck, and his new style was born. By 2000, Banksy moved to London and stayed with friends Luke Egan and Jamie Eastman. Eastman worked at a record label that used several of Banksy’s illustrations. Banksy was reportedly staying in a flat in London’s Hackney neighborhood when numerous works of art began appearing in the area. While in London, Banksy’s work experienced a great deal of exposure and gained notoriety that led to a series of international exhibits. International Works Banksy’s first international exhibition entitled Existencilism was held in 2002 at L.A.’s 33? gallery. This was followed by a 2003 exhibit in London entitled Turf Wars, which was held at a secret location in an East London warehouse. This controversial exhibit featured cattle painted with faces, arrows and a variety of commercial motifs.

The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) said the conditions were suitable, but animal activists ironically protested the exhibit that was ostensibly raising awareness about animal exploitation. Banksy’s “Show Me the Monet.” These popular exhibits were followed by a variety of subversive versions of popular paintings and a series of prints featuring Queen Victoria in an explicit position as a lesbian. Christina Aguilera purchased the original Queen Victoria print for £25,000. Banksy’s subversive works include variations of paintings by Andy Warhol , Monet, Edward Hopper and Leonardo da Vinci. Banksy has a unique way of satirizing the works of the great masters while paying homage to their acclaimed pieces. Between 2003 and 2004, Banksy completed an exhibit in the Alexandria suburb of Sydney that was attended by 1,500 people. By 2004, Banksy was producing a number of new works for future exhibits. The most famous in this era was his spoof on the British £10 note, which features the head of Princess Diana. The notes also featured altered text that read Banksy of England instead of Bank of England.

Banksy of England £10 Notes These notes were distributed at the Notting Hill Carnival and at the Reading Festival. While some tried to spend them at local shops, a few of the notes have sold for £200 on eBay. Several limited-edition posters featuring 10 uncut notes sold for £100 on the anniversary of Diana’s death. Several years later, the Bonhams auction house sold one of the posters for £24,000. The Big Time Bethlehem Wall Graffiti by Pawel Ryszawa By 2006, Banksy was a fringe street artist who had reached the big time in a big way. In 2005, Banksy traveled to Palestine and the West Bank where he stenciled nine images on the Bethlehem Wall. These works show children digging and playing near the wall, an armored dove with an olive branch, a girl frisking a soldier, a ladder ascending the wall, a girl floating over the wall with balloons and several other pieces. This groundbreaking series led to a second exhibit in Los Angeles entitled Barely Legal.

This three-day exhibit featured a variety of vandalized art and a pink “elephant in the room,” which symbolizes the ever-present issue of world poverty. The elephant featured a flashy Indo-style print with gold motifs set over the elephant’s painted skin. Elephant in the Room At the same time, Banksy was crafting a series of prints featuring British model Kate Moss. These silkscreen prints done in the style of Andy Warhol sold at Sotheby’s for £50,400, which was five times the estimate. During the same auction, a stencil of the Mona Lisa with paint dripping from her eyes sold for a record-setting £57,600. These groundbreaking sales turned Banksy from an outsider into a commercial success. Banksy at Auction Due to demand, a number of Banksy’s works sold for prices that exceeded all expectations. Bombing Middle England sold for £102,000, Balloon Girl sold for £37,200, and Bomb Hugger sold for £31,200. Several other works received incredible amounts.

Ballerina with Action Man Parts sold for £96,000, Glory sold for £72,000, and Untitled (2004) sold for £33,600. In 2007, a new record for Banksy pieces was set when Space Girl & Bird sold for £288,000 at Bonhams of London. The various mediums that Banksy uses make it difficult to preserve his pieces and to market them, but this hasn’t stopped people from trying. In 2007, a Bristol couple attempted to sell their home, which featured a prominent Banksy mural. Although offers fell through due to logistics, the couple is marketing the property as a mural with a house attached. In Norfolk, a couple listed a mobile home that Banksy doodled on a decade earlier for £500,000. According to reports, the couple purchased the home for £1,000, which would be quite a profitable investment. Whether Banksy is pleased with the profits remains a mystery.

In a post on his website, the artist featured a picture of auction attendees with the caption “I can’t believe you morons buy this sh**!” Major Installations Banksy’s Stonehenge by Rodw Bored by his success, Banksy embarked on a new mission to organize collective exhibits and major installations. The most famous of these was Banksy’s Stonehenge. This monumental installation featured at the Glastonbury Festival was built entirely from portable toilets in an archetypically Banksy manner. One of Banksy’s most iconic works is a crumpled phone booth that is lying on its side, stabbed with an ax and dripping blood. This installation appeared on a Soho street in 2006 and was quickly removed by Westminster officials. Banksy’s Crumpled Phone Booth In May 2008, Banksy organized the Cans Festival, a street-art pun on France’s famous Cannes Film Festival. This event was held in an abandoned tunnel and featured 39 international street artists, including Mr. Brainwash , Blek le Rat, Jef Aéroso and many others. After the Cans Festival, he put together his first official exhibition in New York.

Opening in early October, the Village Pet Store and Charcoal Grill exhibit featured a variety of animatronic pets, including a rabbit applying makeup and a mother hen tending her McNugget babies as they pecked at a container of barbecue sauce. More International Appearances Rocking Chair Man by Infrogmation of New Orleans While visiting the states, Banksy embarked on a stenciling tour of hurricane-ravaged New Orleans that included his signature rats and a variety of human figures. Taking advantage of derelict buildings in the Lower 9th Ward, Banksy stenciled looters entering windows and a boy swinging on a rescue tube. He also stenciled a man in a rocking chair under a no loitering sign, and he painted a hooded KKK member hanging from a noose. This final work was quickly covered. Success or Bust – Has Banksy been Arrested? Always upping the ante, Banksy is breaking boundaries and taking street art to places where it has never been. In 2009, the Banksy vs. Bristol Museum show opened at the Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery in his purported hometown.

The show featured 100 unique pieces, including animatronic displays and large installations. More than 300,000 visitors attended the exhibition. During his career, Banksy’s work has made many controversial appearances. In 2005, he placed subverted paintings in several prominent New York museums, including the Museum of Modern Art, The Met, the Brooklyn Museum and the American Museum of Natural History. He also hung a primitive a cave painting depicting hunter-gatherers pushing a shopping cart in the British Museum of London. This piece was promptly destroyed. In 2006, Banksy replaced 500 copies of Paris Hilton’s first CD with a mix of Danger Mouse songs and his own digitally altered cover art. The tracks included “Why Am I Famous?” and “What Have I Done?” Only a few copies were sold before workers pulled the items. Copies of the altered CDs have sold for £750 online. The same year, Bansky placed an inflatable doll dressed as a Guantanamo prisoner in California’s Disneyland theme park. Banksy’s stencil art has appeared at the Bristol Zoo and the London Zoo where he printed animals’ thoughts.

He also created a series of pieces commemorating the 2012 London Olympics. These works include a pole vaulter jumping over barbed wire and landing on an abandoned mattress. Another stenciled image featured a javelin thrower aiming a surface missile. This was designed to highlight a military installation that was defending the site. Keep it, or Clean it? Despite Banksy’s status, city officials, property owners and fellow street artists have destroyed his work. One piece in Melbourne, Australia, was protected by Plexiglas, but a group of artists managed to pour silver paint behind the sheet, which completely obliterated the image. Banksy created seven pieces in Toronto, but most of the images were destroyed. In Detroit, an art group excavated a piece of Banksy’s work for preservation. Even in Banksy’s home country, officials struggle to cover up the stencils as quickly as he makes them. However, there have been several instances of inadvertent destruction. A Muslim community center painted over an image on the side of their new building, and a team of plumbers in Australia accidentally destroyed a parachuting rat that was applied in the late 1990s.

Other Works In addition to his status as an acclaimed artist, Banksy is a successful author and filmmaker. His 2010 film “ Exit Through the Gift Shop ,” which featured Mr. Brainwash, was nominated for an Oscar. Before the premier at the Sundance Film Festival, he created 10 pieces of street art in Park City and Salt Lake City, Utah, to promote the premier. To date, Banksy has published six books featuring his art and opinions. Wall and Piece was published by Random House in 2005, and Banksy: “You Are an Acceptable Level of Threat” was released in 2012. Although critics say that Banksy is merely a vandal and his work is dazzlingly clever to idiots, his fame is undeniable. Virtually every aspect of Banksy’s work is controversial, and perhaps that is the secret behind his success.

The Story Behind Banksy | Arts & Culture | Smithsonian Contact Privacy Policy Terms of Use The Story Behind Banksy On his way to becoming an international icon, the subversive and secretive street artist turned the art world upside-down Banksy melds street-fighting passion and pacifist ardor in his image of a protester whose Molotov cocktail morphs into a bouquet. (Pixelbully / Alamy) By Will Ellsworth-Jones Smithsonian Magazine | Subscribe February 2013 When Time magazine selected the British artist Banksy—graffiti master, painter, activist, filmmaker and all-purpose provocateur—for its list of the world’s 100 most influential people in 2010, he found himself in the company of Barack Obama, Steve Jobs and Lady Gaga. He supplied a picture of himself with a paper bag (recyclable, naturally) over his head. Most of his fans don’t really want to know who he is (and have loudly protested Fleet Street attempts to unmask him).

But they do want to follow his upward tra­jectory from the outlaw spraying—or, as the argot has it, “bombing”—walls in Bristol, England, during the 1990s to the artist whose work commands hundreds of thousands of dollars in the auction houses of Britain and America. Today, he has bombed cities from Vienna to San Francisco, Barcelona to Paris and Detroit. And he has moved from graffiti on gritty urban walls to paint on canvas, conceptual sculpture and even film, with the guileful documentary Exit Through the Gift Shop, which was nominated for an Academy Award. Related Books Who Owns This Half-Million Dollar Banksy Mural? Pest Control, the tongue-in-cheek-titled organization set up by the artist to authenticate the real Banksy artwork, also protects him from prying outsiders. Hiding behind a paper bag, or, more commonly, e-mail, Banksy relentlessly controls his own narrative. His last face-to-face interview took place in 2003. While he may shelter behind a concealed identity, he advocates a direct connection between an artist and his constituency. “There’s a whole new audience out there, and it’s never been easier to sell [one’s art],” Banksy has maintained.

“You don’t have to go to college, drag ’round a portfolio, mail off transparencies to snooty galleries or sleep with someone powerful, all you need now is a few ideas and a broadband connection. This is the first time the essentially bourgeois world of art has belonged to the people. We need to make it count.” *** The Barton Hill district of Bristol in the 1980s was a scary part of town. Very white—probably no more than three black families had somehow ended up there—working-class, run-down and unwelcoming to strangers. So when Banksy, who came from a much leafier part of town, decided to go make his first foray there, he was nervous. “My dad was badly beaten up there as a kid,” he told fellow graffiti artist and author Felix Braun. He was trying out names at the time, sometimes signing himself Robin Banx, although this soon evolved into Banksy. The shortened moniker may have demonstrated less of the gangsters’ “robbing banks” cachet, but it was more memorable—and easier to write on a wall. Around this time, he also settled on his distinctive stencil approach to graffiti.

When he was 18, he once wrote, he was painting a train with a gang of mates when the British Transport Police showed up and everyone ran. “The rest of my mates made it to the car,” Banksy recalled, “and disappeared so I spent over an hour hidden under a dumper truck with engine oil leaking all over me. As I lay there listening to the cops on the tracks, I realized I had to cut my painting time in half or give it up altogether. I was staring straight up at the stenciled plate on the bottom of the fuel tank when I realized I could just copy that style and make each letter three feet high.” But he also told his friend, author Tristan Manco: “As soon as I cut my first stencil I could feel the power there. I also like the political edge. All graffiti is low-level dissent, but stencils have an extra history. They’ve been used to start revolutions and to stop wars.” Longing and whimsy, innocence and experience, irreverence and wit, as well as a penchant for the purely zany, coexist in Banksy’s work. A girl releases a heart-shaped balloon, one in a series of similar motifs produced in locations worldwide.

(Steve Cotton / Art of the State) Banksy melds street-fighting passion and pacifist ardor in his image of a protester whose Molotov cocktail morphs into a bouquet. (Pixelbully / Alamy) In London, a stenciled worker transmutes the no-parking lines he is painting into a stylized flower. (Matt Keeble / Alamy) Winston Churchill sports a mohawk. (Chris Jackson / Getty Images) In a piece of conceptual sculpture, an unsuspecting phone booth is felled by a vengeful pickax. (Steve Cotton / Art of the State) While skewering the art world’s pretensions, Banksy has maintained an activist’s belief in the power of images to effect change. At a show in Bristol in 2009, he hung a painting with a hefty price tag, then inserted a howl protest—“You have got to be kidding me”—into the work. (Banksy) Elsewhere, pure fantasy reigns: an origami crane fishes from a riverbank. (AP Images) On the wall at the West Bank, he meditated on a power dynamic upended, as a child frisks a soldier.

(Nick Fielding / Alamy) At a Bonham’s auction, rats merit unconditional love. (EPA / Facundo Arrizabalaga / Corbis) According to Banksy, "all graffiti is low-level dissent, but stencils have an extra history. They've been used to start revolutions and to stop wars." (Courtesy of banksy.co.uk ) Banksy has "bombed" cities from Vienna to San Francisco, Barcelona to Paris and Detroit. (Courtesy of banksy.co.uk ) Banksy's Australia. (Courtesy of banksy.co.uk ) Shopping cart by Banksy. (Courtesy of banksy.co.uk ) The people—and the apes and rats—Banksy drew in the early days have a strange, primitive feel to them. (Courtesy of banksy.co.uk ) The people—and the apes and rats—he drew in these early days have a strange, primitive feel to them. My favorite is a piece that greets you when you enter the Pierced Up tattoo parlor in Bristol. The wall painting depicts giant wasps (with television sets strapped on as additional weapons) divebombing a tempting bunch of flowers in a vase.

Parlor manager Maryanne Kemp recalls Banksy’s marathon painting session: “It was an all-nighter.” By 1999, he was headed to London. He was also beginning to retreat into anonymity. Evading the authorities was one explanation—Banksy “has issues with the cops.” But he also discovered that anonymity created its own invaluable buzz. As his street art appeared in cities across Britain, comparisons to Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring began circulating. Banksy’s first London exhibition, so to speak, took place in Rivington Street in 2001, when he and fellow street artists convened in a tunnel near a pub. “We hung up some decorators’ signs nicked off a building site,” he later wrote, “and painted the walls white wearing overalls. We got the artwork up in 25 minutes and held an opening party later that week with beers and some hip-hop pumping out of the back of a Transit van. About 500 people turned up to an opening which had cost almost nothing to set up.” In July 2003, Banksy mounted “Turf War,” his breakthrough exhibition.

Staged in a former warehouse in Hackney, the show dazzled the London art scene with its carnival-atmosphere display, which featured a live heifer, its hide embellished with a portrait of Andy Warhol, as well as Queen Elizabeth II in the guise of a chimpanzee. Late that year, a tall, bearded figure in a dark overcoat, scarf and floppy hat strolled into Tate Britain clutching a large paper bag. He made his way to Room 7 on the second level. He then dug out his own picture, an unsigned oil painting of a rural scene he had found in a London street market. Across the canvas, which he had titled Crimewatch UK Has Ruined the Countryside for All of Us, he had stenciled blue-and-white police crime-scene tape. Single Page Previous Page 1 of 3 Next 1 2 3 Like this article? Banksy Snapped? This Is Allegedly a Photograph of the Graffiti Artist at Work in New York City - The Daily Beast Exclusive Caught? Banksy Snapped? This Is Allegedly a Photograph of the Graffiti Artist at Work in New York City Has Banksy, the elusive graffiti artist, finally been captured on camera?

This photograph, taken today in New York City, allegedly shows Banksy at work. *UPDATE: Now there's a video. 10.25.13 11:14 PM ET Has Banksy, the mysterious graffiti artist, finally been caught in the act? For the month of October, the Bristol, England, native has been trekking all over New York City for his latest project, Better Out Than In, unveiling one graffiti art piece a day. He’s been labeled a vandal by Mayor Bloomberg, and is alleged to have bailed on his NYC project due to “police activity.” But a Banksy fanatic allegedly captured the artist in the act earlier today on the streets of New York City. The artist is allegedly pictured spraying a wall with black paint to create a "drip effect," according to the photographer. The photograph was taken on the corner of Elizabeth and Houston streets in lower Manhattan. There have been a few photographs purported to be Banksy in the past, but none have been confirmed, and none have shown the artist in the act. People have speculated about his identity for years. Is he Robin Gunningham , a college-educated Bristol man born on July 28, 1973?

Or is he Robert Banks? The Guardian’s Simon Hattenstone is the only member of the media who’s met Banksy face-to-face, and described him as “white, 28, scruffy casual—jeans, T-shirt, a silver tooth, silver chain, and silver earring. He looks like a cross between Jimmy Nail and Mike Skinner of the Streets.” Although this could have just been a bit of cheeky misdirection on the artist’s part. *UPDATE: This is from the photographer: "Context: he was doing the walls for his grim reaper bumper car piece; you could see through the hole(s) in the tarp covering the fences for the first minute or two before they covered the holes with another tarp (because they realized people were looking). He came in, put on white coveralls, sprayed the walls, changed into different clothes with sunglasses/fake beard and walked out in between 4 members of his 'crew' while pretending to talk on his cell phone and walked down the street and around the corner.

When he walked out, there were a little under a hundred people waiting to see the piece and I'd say two or three people noticed it was him." *UPDATE 2: Now, there's a video. This, from the photographer, about the video: "Banksy is allegedly the man entering with the orange backpack... he was giving everyone instructions, and then put on white coveralls and sprayed the walls." Has Banksy been caught on camera? Email a friend IT IS the CCTV footage that has art fans everywhere salivating. The footage, taken outside a youth project centre, appears to capture the world-famous graffiti artist Banksy at work. The now artwork, called Mobile Lovers, shows two lovers cuddling with their phones in hand. The work was attached to a plank of wood which was then screwed onto a wall outside the youth centre in the English city of Bristol. Has Banksy been caught on camera?Source:YouTube The CCTV shows two men unloading equipment from a white can in the early hours of Sunday morning. The men, wearing florescent jackets, can clearly be seen working on a wall with one carrying what appears to be a screen.

On Monday the work was found by Broad Plain and Riverside Youth Project leader David Stinchcombe who removed it from the wall. The CCTV image which apparently shows the elusive artist Banksy at work.Source:YouTube The 58-year-old youth leader received death threats for removing the artwork but he said he took it down until it was confirmed it was by Banksy. He now plans to sell it to raise funds for the youth centre. “I’ve had death threats today,” Mr Stinchcombe told The Mirror. “I said to them ‘if you want to threaten me come down to the club and do it in the boxing ring’. “I had to make a decision as to whether to allow it to stay there and come in today to find it gone or damaged, or take it yesterday and think what can we do with this to make it a bit of a reality and be good for the community.” The latest officially confirmed Banksy artwork, named Mobile Lovers, is displayed insideSource:Getty Images The work is on display at the centre for a donation. The addition of Mobile Lovers comes just two days after a new piece of graffiti street art was discovered in the hometown of Britain’s electronic spy agency.

The stencilled artwork appeared on a wall in the western England city of Cheltenham, depicting three figures in trench coats and trilbys snooping on a telephone booth. Cheltenham is home to GCHQ, Britain’s electronic eavesdropping agency. The secretive organisation found itself in the spotlight after some of its covert activities were revealed by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. This piece of graffiti street art, claimed to be by the secretive underground guerilla arSource:Getty Images The Cheltenham work has not been claimed on Banksy’s official website, but has many of the elusive artist’s hallmarks, including the stencilled technique and ironic social commentary. The recent CCTV footage is not the first time Banksy has been reportedly “spotted”. In October last year, the street artist was reportedly photographed overseeing the creation of a piece of artwork in New York. The secretive artist, who was holding an “artist’s residency” on the streets of New York, was apparently photographed wearing a flat cap and paint-splattered overalls while trying to fix a “moving painting” on the back of a van.

Banksy has succeeded in keeping his true identity under wraps since he emerged in the 1990s, but it’s believed his first name is Robin and he grew up in the English city of Bristol. The Bridges of Graffiti: A Story in Street Art | AnOther The Bridges of Graffiti: A Story in Street Art — June 10, 2015 — A show at the Venice Biennale takes us on a journey through the story of street art – here we present our five graffiti highlights from World War II to now Paddle Ball, 1974Photography by Jon Naar Text Sam Johnson Art or vandalism? Violent expression or expressing yourself? Basquiat or Banksy? Even in the ever contentious world of art, the heated debate surrounding graffiti is more scalding than most. So as a new show, The Bridges of Graffiti , opens in Venice to celebrate both the history of the form and the newest, most exciting voices working within it, we trace back through more than 60 years of the spray can, remembering the pioneers and tags who have shaped its story. Engraving of Kilroy on the WWII Memorial in Washington, D.C.

WWII: Kilroy Was Here Graffiti had a modest beginning. Looking back, beyond its associations with New York City subways and position as a central tenet to an emerging hip-hop culture, it first came to public attention in the 1940s in the form of Kilroy ­– a cartoon face with a large comical nose peering from behind a wall, alongside the text ‘Kilroy Was Here’. Throughout the 40s the popularity of this icon increased, as Kilroy became associated with American soldiers during WWII, appearing at barracks and on military equipment. The origins of its titular character was the cause of much speculation – in December 1946, the New York Times ran an article on the emblem, trying to attribute it to the spraycan of a shipyard employee who was using ‘Kilroy Was Here’ as a means of proving to his employers that Mr Kilroy had performed his duties. No one really knows but the image of Kilroy was so prolific it became a transatlantic phenomenon, taking on the name of Mr Chad in the UK, but from the 1950s the appearance of this graphic icon lessened as more diverse forms graffiti started to appear.

Mother and child walking with Kip Jump sign and graffiti including: City Vanguards and The Moons. Coney Island, 1973Photography by Jon Naar 1960s New York Beginnings In New York, TAKI183 started appearing on subway cars from 1971. It was the abbreviation of the writer’s name – Demetraki – and his address, 183rd Street in Washington Heights. Taki was 17 at the time the article was published and had been working as a foot messenger, a job which gave him access to subway cars and streets all over New York City.

The trend proliferated, and in 1974, Norman Mailer wrote an essay titled The Faith of Graffiti, published in book form alongside images by Jon Naar , in which he aligned the likes of CAY161 and TAKI183 with Giotto and Michelangelo, de Kooning and Rauschenberg – “What a quintessential marriage of cool and style to write your name in giant separate living letters, large as animals, lithe as snakes, mysterious as Arabic and Chinese curls of alphabet.” SAMO© Graffiti by John Paul Basquiat, 1979Photography by Henry Flynt 1980s boom The graffiti boom during the 1980s is mostly thought of as a countercultural phenomenon synonymous with the New York City subways and streets. Born in New York in 1960, Jean-Michel Basquiat began inscribing SAMO© on buildings in Lower Manhattan from as early as 1976.

The tag, which Basquiat said emerged from a stoned conversation with his friend and collaborator Al Diaz talking about the marijuana they were smoking being “the same old shit”, caught on, and evolved into longer, more poetic sentences. But in 1979, after an altercation between Diaz and Basquiat, Basquiat started to write ‘SAMO IS DEAD’ signalling the end of the principal movement. By the 1980s his solo work had been exhibited in galleries and museums across the globe. Yet, regardless of its location, whether on the street or in the gallery, Basquiat’s art continued to critique social systems and power structures, with art critic Jeffrey Deitch describing Basquiat’s work as “disjointed street poetry.” Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith HaringPhotography by George Hirose Another key practitioner in the New York graffiti movement was Keith Haring who, after meeting Basquiat in 1979, started to draw white-chalk pictures on the plain black paper pasted over old ads in subway stations. By 1984 Haring was invited to create a temporary mural for the National Gallery of Victoria and the Australian Centre for Contemporary Arts.

His boldly drawn and vividly coloured figures are easily recognisable and tackled subjects such as sexuality, AIDS and war. During the 1980s there were a number of exhibitions devoted to this energetic art movement. Washington Project for the Arts held an exhibition entitled Street Works in 1981 and in 1984 Francesca Alinovi curated the exhibition of New York graffiti Arte di Frontiera in Italy, including the likes of Haring and Basquiat, and which its curator described as “an intermediate space between culture and nature, mass and elite.” Artwork by Banksy Banksy and his imitators Despite being active for nearly three decades, the identity of English graffiti artist Banksy is still unknown, and much debated. His work is easily recognisable – creating stencilled murals that shrewdly satirise and critique the establishment and general complacency of society. Banksy began working in Bristol in 1990 as part of the larger Bristol underground scene and his work can now be seen in cities all over the world from Bethlehem and Philadelphia to Melbourne.

He is thought to have been inspired by Parisian graffiti artist Blek le Rat, who in 1981 began to paint stencils of rats onto walls around Paris. Banksy’s work can be ambiguous as well as abrupt. In one of his more poetic pieces a young girl releases a red heart shaped balloon and she watches as it starts to drift away whilst his more literal approach can be seen in the “We’re Bored of Fish” which was painted in the penguin enclosure at London Zoo. Banksy has become enormously commercially successful – one of his works sold for £288,000 in 2007 – and his rise has seen innumerable imitators as well as a conversation begin in earnest about the value and ownership of street art. Todd James, Time Waits For No One, 2013Courtesy of The Bridges of Graffiti The Bridges of Graffiti Thirty years on from the Arte di Frontiera exhibition in Italy, a new exhibition titled The Bridges of Graffiti at the 2015 Venice Biennale positions itself as the sequel to the 1984 show.

As well as a section dedicated to the history of the art form, ten international artists including Doze Green, Eron and Futura have created new works and collaborated to produce a Hall of Fame piece. Self-taught artist Todd James, also known as REAS, contributes vivid, amusing yet disturbing musings on themes that range across war, sexual exposure and capitalism. Time Waits For No One is strikingly similar in style to a Matisse cut-out, featuring four faceless figures and disembodied hands lurching from inside the work brandishing large guns. Meanwhile the graphic flourishes of Mode 2 fill a large wall with a mural that draws powerful influences from a childhood spent immersed in science fiction literature and comic books. Zero-T, A Bag Full Of Cans & Partners, 2015Courtesy of The Bridges of Graffiti The Bridges of Graffiti not only references the long and energetic history of graffiti but also its future. Whether the works appear inside in an exhibition or on the street, they continue to enrapture their audience because of the ever-evolving relevance of street art and its unrivalled ability to speak to the masses.

Due to the distinct style of all its practitioners, it is a varied and fragmented cultural phenomenon that, like any contemporary art form, continues to negotiate its own parameters and boundaries. The Bridges of Graffiti is at Arterminal c/o Terminal S. Basilio, Fondamenta Zattere Ponte di Legno, Venice, until November 22.

Question: The work of graffiti artist Banksy was first seen in which English city?
Answer: BRISTOL